LIFE’S STAGES

There is a widespread debate today about the short term perspective of a “personalized medicine”, or better a “precision medicine”: but how many “people” are we, or how much do we change during our life course? How many different “ages” do we live, from the stage of a fertilized egg up to the conclusive ones of old age, more or less senescent?

The first edition of Bologna Medicina, the Festival della Scienza Medica focused the scientific and clinical attention on the “long life” condition. Any evidence shows that – at least in the wealthier and more advanced societies – the life expectation of human biological adventure on the Earth reaches out towards a hundred years. The second edition, which will take place from 19th to 22th of May 2016, shall instead focus on the different stages of this exciting and precarious adventure: how many “life stages” are there?

Prenatal, neonatal, infancy, childhood, juvenile, puberty, adolescence, adult life, old age and senescence. Human biologists who study the transitional physiological changes of our body-mind complex count at least ten different stages, each one with specific features. Although we take for granted that we are always the same person from the cradle to the grave, in reality each one lives as many lives a number of physiological stages, therefore we encounter different potential pathologies according the specific life stage we are in. This means that medicine has to use new ideas and creative strategies to pursue scientific and technological advancements to explain, prevent and cure diseases in an effective and functional way while taking into consideration the different stages of each human life: how many and which interventions can be applied at the different “ages of life” to prevent the health consequences from the lack of awareness that, during human life, our “person” goes through so many relevant physiological modifications? In fact, each specific growth process changes our body-mind and also the individual predisposition to fall ill.Certainly, many dangers do not strictly depend on age – such as the most common ones, like infectious diseases – but for many of the more common diseases medicine has to keep on evolution and development, as it has already started to do, and always more scientifically reliable methods, in order to come up with pertinent explicative models, effective prevention strategies and tailored therapies.

Nothing makes sense in Biology [so neither in Medicine] except in the light of evolution – said the evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. The human species phylogeny has been lasting millions of years, and as for other higher organisms, natural selection favoured our investments and adjustment abilities rather than only the reproductive ones: it is because of the natural selection process that we acquired a species specific Life Cycle. This means that the resources for growing, for staying alive and for reproducing, related to age or size, are distributed so that they can maximize the potential to adapt during the individual life stages. The evolution of the Human Life Cycle, in particular of specific pre-adult characteristic of this cycle (all the many and long stages preluding adult life, from the prenatal one to adolescence) allowed for the acquisition of the mental capacities needed and sufficient for evolution and for the diffusion of “higher” human traits. It is because we live many lives that our life was so efficient in the colonization of the world.

Understanding the evolutionary meaning of the Ages of Life means to better qualify the aim of personalizing medicine, by making it more precise. Nonetheless, the Festival della Scienza Medica can only look far ahead.

In Bologna, medicine has a great future.

Gilberto Corbellini and Pino Donghi

FESTIVAL DELLA SCIENZA MEDICA

THE AGES OF MEDICINE

BOLOGNA, 19-22 MAY 2016

«No spring nor summer beauty,
hath such grace,
I have seen in one autumnal face»
John Donne


I think it is licit to wonder whether at the different stages of life may correspond, even in the physical uniqueness, different “persons”.

Maybe this can be verified also in terms of the physiological evolution of a single person, keeping in mind that many events in life may lead to a deep personal transformation during a single biological existence.
However, what today seeems to be relevant is a long life that the privileged ones, who live in economic and socially advanced societies, pretend to live.

Too many of those who live in rich and developed communities, and for this reason tend a reject any intrusion coming from communities and nations that are not economically convenient, have the idea that it is a kind of right to stop the passing of time. Today it is a common thought that the physiological alternation of the stages of life can be changed, thus existence, which was considered unique for centuries, is now viewed as a plural experience.
Longevity represent an achievement of civilization and therefore it should come as a right to those who are part of a civilized society. In Italy, in a world context where all Nations are growing old, people age more and more, even if there has been a recent minimal trend reversal.

At this point many issues come up, raising awareness particularly in those who deal with medical science: longevity is an achievement, as long as it represents a resource, and not an emergency or a social  destabilization. An anti ageing drug does not exist, even if many people look for it, but the social context, the evolution of thought and the advanced economic and technological development, guarantee a more complete and smooth life.
However, the subject matter seems to be vast and the problem derives from the the numerous and unpredictable emergencies. Above all, how is it possible to deal with this kind of issues, in the context of an advanced civilization, without thinking primarily to young people? And how can we justify a society that only aims at vanity and at remaining always the same since growing old is no longer viewed as a benchmark?
Paradoxically, a large sector of medical research and medicine evolution risk to be blamed.

There is who (Hillman) wonders whether face lifting has to be considered a crime against humanity, “cause the way in which we treat our face has consequences on society”. I feel a strong connection with this attitude, even if it is easier to refer to Anna Magnani who says to her make up artist: “do not cover wrinkles, it took me a lifetime to have them on my face”.
The National Health Care System results to be deeply involved, sometimes with questionable procedures, in spending  exorbitant amounts of money for aesthetic medicine.
This does not represent a great success for Institutions, nor for those who repudiate the temporal limits of life, because there is a large part of the population that, even if with more hope, lives badly and without the support of that formidable shock absorber that is the family. The government tries to find a solution for the lack of support from families, not with a service network managed by competent and dedicated people, but through structures that are extraneous, linked to Institutions, to politics and sometimes even illegal.
A trend that, hopefully reversible, matches the occupation of young people with the expulsion of old ones. However, both categories, young and “old”, in view of the unavailability of young Italian people to do certain jobs, ask for new hands, without realizing that people with their history and culture will arrive and not just robots or replicants.

The story of “scrapping”, evoked too many times, is emblematic, because it contributes to strengthen the concept that old age is a useless and deteriorated state and not a prerequisite of wisdom as it used to be in the past. That is why today no one is happy to be defined as old and the anti-ageing marketing takes big advantage of this. The Government just follows instead of proceeding, it does not invent, nor innovate. It follows the glories of the “DRG” (Diagnosis Related Groups), that was born as a technical instrument of rationalization, but it actually is a stiff mechanism of simplification and injustice.

We will certainly talk about children. I don’t know whether the body is a disposable container, but surely nature has invested fundamental resources and instruments for the reproduction of species.  Ageing removal is therefore “unscheduled” (Vergani e Schiavi).

There is who said that “on the threshold of old age, a therapy of ideas is necessary”. This argument, that included illuminating claims by Italo Calvino and others, is particularly interesting but the brain that consumes the great part of the oxygen destined to the human body  has to include physiological death in the philosophy of life.
“Elderly people have to believe in themselves, in their normality” (Vergani). This is the only way, I believe, to attenuate the lacerations within the social fabric, produced by “new”diseases, like Alzheimer.

The growing individuation of new diseases and the increase in knowledge make evident the lack of sociality in death, disease and old lage.The arrival of exceptional pharmaceuticals, that are the results of the more and more advanced research activity of the Italian pharmaceutical companies, requires an intervention not only on the costs, even if companies are obliged to spend enormous amounts of money in their industrial development, but also an involvement of the entire society.
Disease, death, and old age eradication reinforces a Western gap, based on “every old person wants to be young” towards the Third world, based on “every young person wants to become old”.

Morality, ideology and economy seem to no longer live in Italy, but our hope is that, also through the experience of the Festival, Bologna may again play the important role that it had for a long time in history.

Fabio Roversi Monaco
President of Genus Bononiae. Musei nella Città

* I used many quotations from the book by Carlo Vergani and Gian Giacomo Schiavi, Ancora giovani per essere vecchi, (Still young to be old) published by Corriere della Sera in 2014. I would like to thank the Authors.

FOR THE YOUNGEST
The wonders of the human body described playing. The splendour of the Anatomical Theatre, one of Bologna’s jewel, exclusively open for schools and families. A journey for young explorers of tomorrow’s knowledge.

THE STAGES OF LIFE
Diseases and medicine are analyzed through the body over time. A dynamic and historicized visit about pathological biology and anatomy. The awareness that the oganism identity can be measured on the different persons that we become throughout the multiple stages of our life.

THE GUEST COUNTRY
On the long journey of humanity, the cultural dimension projects itself on the evolution of species: to the same biology, different visions of the world and social developments correspond. This year, at Bologna Medicine, a new “guest country” has been selected: the millenary tradition of Chinese medicine is compared, positively, to our history and knowledge.

SPECIAL EVENTS
Music, art, cinema, shows. Medicine meets some of today and history’s protagonists, contaminating discourse genres, verifying translation itineraries, trying to let the richness of the philosophical-medical thought emerge from the comparison with other disciplines.a

THE LESSON OF HISTORY
History is also the record of great medical achievements. It is difficult to imagine the recent social developments, with a life expectancy that in advanced countries aspires to one hundred years, without understanding the value of some fondumental pharmacological revolutions. Pandemic eradication, discovery of anti-inflammatories and antibiotics, the study of antiparasitics. At Bologna Medicine, 4 pharmaceuticals that have changed the history of humanity.

VISITS IN WARDS
Three beds, three patients, the same disease but different diagnosis and therapies in different historical periods. A mix between a conference and a theatrical event: the public follows the “primary doctor” – like in hospitals, in the morning “ward visits”– that examines the patients/students. Medicine’s progresses between old and new diseased people…but not only! Life in the family doctor’s studio: a simulation to understand the centrality of the patient.

FOCUS
Current day highlights: vaccines, personalized medicine, sleep disorders, doctor-patient relationship, cognitive exercise, ageing slow down, costs and benefits of research, new horizons in biotechnology, prevention, screening and transplants.

MEDICINE IN EVOLUTION
Medicine, like every science, is in continuous and positive evolution, yesterday’s discoveries represent the ground on which to build tomorrow’s knowledge. The conferences scheduled provide an overview of some recent developments of bio-medical research – but also of apparently distant disciplines, like information technology and telecommunication – tracing the horizon of medicine and of the doctor-patient future relationship.

AT THE TABLE!
Nutraceutics is one of the new and important dimensions of the relationship among health, disease, well-being and prevention. A conference programme to take the stock of what we know, what we are able to cure, what can be prevented, and what we should find in the dish, in all the stages of life!

EX CATHEDRA – NOBEL LECTURES
Magistral conferences, in the name of the great clinicians and scholars of the Alma Mater tradition of the first modern medicine school in the history of the University.

CURATED BY
A series of meetings organised and promoted by institutions, companies, bodies and sectoral organisations.

Alison Abbott

Alison Abbott studied pharmacology but has spent most of her life in scientific journalism. She has been Senior European Correspondent for Nature since 1992, covering medical sciences as well as science policy in central and southern Europe, including Italy.

Roberto Balzani

Roberto Balzani is a Contemporary History Ordinary Professor at the University of Bologna. He is a scholar of local administration in the XIX and XX century, he was also Mayor of Forlì from 2009 to 2014.

Fu Baotian

Worldwide-known acupuncturist, Fu Baotian is President of the Italian Association of Natural Medicine.

Andrea Bartuli

Andrea Bartuli is the Responsible of the Complex Operative Unit Rare Diseases and Medical Genetics at the Bambin Gesù (IRCCS) children’s hospital of Rome. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee for the List of Rare Diseases of Latium.

Mariano Bassi

A Bolognese Psychiatrist, Director of the Mental Health Department at the Niguarda General Hospital of Milan. Formerly President of the Italian Psychiatric Society, is currently Professor at the Medicine and Surgery Faculty of the University of Bologna.

Franco Bazzoli

Franco Bazzoli is Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Bologna, and Director of the Operative Unit of Gastroenterology and Digestive Endoscopy at the general hospital S. Orsola-Malpighi of Bologna since 2010; he is also Director of the Digestive System Department of the same Institute since 2014. He is honorary member of the European Helicobacter Pylori Study Group since 2012.

Arnaldo Benini

Arnaldo Benini is Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Zurich. His latest publications include Che cosa sono io Il cervello alla ricerca di sé stesso (Garzanti 2009); La coscienza imperfetta. Le neuroscienze e il significato della vita (Garzanti 2012); with Giorgio Vallortigara Cervelli divisi Solo gli esseri umani contano da sinistra a destra? (Accademia di Architettura Mendrisio 2014). Translation of Paul Thagard’s book, Il cervello e il senso della vita (Mondadori 2014). He collaborates with the cultural Sunday supplement of the newspaper Il Sole24Ore about Science topics.

Bruce Beutler

Bruce Beutler was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2011, along with Jules Hoffmann and Ralph M. Steinmann, for the discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity. He is Professor and Director at the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense and holder of the “Raymond and Ellen Willie Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research”, University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center (USA). Since 2008, he is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Alberto Bianchi

Doctor Alberto Bianchi is a specialist in Maxillofacial Surgery. He is a research Doctor in 3D Technologies at the University of Bologna. He is the Medical Director of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Operative Unit of the Sant’Orsola Plyclinic, Bologna.

Luigi Bolondi

Luigi Bolondi is Internal Medicine Ordinary Professor at the University of Bologna, he was the President of the Medicine and Surgery School of the same University; he is also the Director of the Internal Medicine Operative Unit of the S. Orsola Polyclinic in Bologna. He is the author of 6 monographs, 3 of which are international, regarding epatology and diagnostic imaging. He has published 325 articles in international periodicals reviewed by Science Citation Index.

Francesco Botrè

Francesco Botrè is graduated in Chemistry and Pharmacy and specialized in Pharmacology; he is Professor at the “Sapienza” University of Rome. Since 1998 he has been the Director of the Anti-Doping Laboratory FMSI, the only one in Italy accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency. He is the author of over 250 scientific publications.

Marcella Brizzi

Marcella Brizzi is an expert on Unconventional Medicine and Naturapathy.

Giorgio Cantelli Forti

Giorgio Cantelli Forti is Professor of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy at the Bologna University.

Mauro Capocci

Mauro Capocci is Assistan Professor of History of Medicine at the University La Sapienza of Rome. He collaborated with the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana “G. Treccani”, “Galileo” (www.galileonet.it) and “Sapere”. He published his own researches on several international reviews and in 2014 he edited, with Gilberto Corbellini, Le cellule della speranza (Codice Edizioni). He collaborates with “Le Scienze” and the “Ciclofficina Centrale di Roma” (www.ciclonauti.org).

Elena Cattaneo

Elena Cattaneo is Professor at Milan University where she directs the “Stamina cells’ biology Laboratory and Pharmacology of the neurogenerative diseases”.

Augusto Cavina

Augusto Cavina is President and CEO of the Montecatone Rehabilitation Institute S.p.a.

Arrigo Francesco Giuseppe Cicero

Arrigo F.G. Cicero, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences at the University of Bologna. Doctor, graduate of nutrition and geriatric therapy at the University of Paris, Internal Medicine Researcher, President of the Italian Nutraceutical society, Author of more than 300 publications on international periodicals (N Engl J Med. 2016;374:591-2, Pharmacol Res. 2016;107:234-42).

Aaron Ciechanover

Professor Aaron Ciechanover is an Israeli physician and scientist. Along with Professors Hershko and Rose, he discovered the ubiquitin system which disposes from the body faulty proteins that if accumulated cause many diseases, including cancer and brain diseases (Alzheimer’s, for example). For their discovery they were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but also many other prestigious prizes.

Stefano Cinotti

Stefano Cinotti is Professor at the Veterinary Department in Bologna.

Lucio Ildebrando Maria Cocco

Lucio Ildebrando Maria Cocco is Professor of Human Anatomy at the University of Chieti since 1986, and Professor of the same discipline at the University of Bologna since 1990. He was awarded with “The titular Litchfield Lectureship 2016-2017” by the Oxford University. He is the Director of the Laboratorio di Trasduzione del Segnale at the Department of Biomedical sciences at the University of Bologna and he is Editor-in-Chief of the series Advances in Biological Regulation, Elsevier Publ.

Fiorenzo Conti

Fiorenzo Conti is Professor of Human Physiology at the Università Politecnica of the Marche, and Director of the Centro di Neurobiologia dell’invecchiamento of the IRCCS INRCA (Ancona). His research focuses on the molecular organization of the cerebral cortex and its alterations in neuropsychiatric diseases. He is the President of the Società Italiana di Neuroscienze.

Gilberto Corbellini

Gilberto Corbellini teaches Bioethics and History of Medicine at the University La Sapienza of Rome, and he is the Director of the Museo di Storia della Medicina. He collaborates with the supplement Domenica of the Sole24Ore and he published several books, like EBM. Medicina basata sull’evoluzione (Laterza 2007), La razionalità negata. Psichiatria e antipsichiatria in Italia (with G. Jervis, Bollati Boringhieri 2008), Scienza, quindi democrazia (Einaudi 2011), Tutta colpa del cervello. Introduzione alla neuroetica (with E. Sirgiovanni, Mondadori 2013), Storia e teorie della salute e della malattia (Carocci 2014), “Imperfezioni umane” (with Luca Pani, Rubbettino 2015), “Cavie? Sperimentazione e diritti animali” (with Chiara Lalli, Il Mulino 2016).

Cesare Cornoldi

Cesare Cornoldi is Professor of general Psychology at the University of Padua. Since 1985 he has been the Director of the Master in “Psychopathology of Learning and of the Service for Learning Diseases” at the University of Padua. He wrote several books, in Italian and English, and he is the author of over 300 research works that appeared on the most important national and international reviews. His main research focuses on memory, intelligence, apprehension and its diseases. He is President of AIRIPA (Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca e l’Intervento in Psicopatologia dell’Apprendimento), Director of the review ‘Psicologia Clinica dello Sviluppo’ and coordinator of the Scientific Committee of ‘Psicologia e Scuola’. He has been a Visiting Professor in many Universities, like UCLosAngeles, UNorthCarolina, British Columbia, Aberdeen (where he was nominated honorary Professor), Paris-V, UBA, Columbia, NewYorkU, UCIrvine.

Marco Corsi

Marco Corsi graduated in Medicine and Surgery; he has been Medical Director of Sigma Tau for 35 years, coordinating the clinical trials of new drugs of cardiovascular, oncology and tropical diseases type.

Pietro Corsi

Pietro Corsi has worked in several European and American Universities (Cambridge, Ginevra, Harvard, Paris, EHESS). He is Emeritus Professor at Oxford. In 2016 he was awarded with the Chair of Excellence by the University Carlos III, Madrid.

Renato Crepaldi

Renato Crepaldi is a Tuina Quigong teacher and an expert in acupuncture and traditional chinese medicine. He’s President of the Matteo Ricci Fundation in Ravenna, Italy.

Carlo Maria Croce

Carlo Maria Croce is Director of the Genetics Institute at the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Ohio State University. He discovered the oncogenes MYC, BCL1, BCL2 e TCL1.

Giovanni De Girolamo

Giovanni de Girolamo, a medical doctor in psychiatry, is currently a II° Level Medical Director and Responsible of the Operative Unit of Epidemiological and Evaluative Psychiatry in the Fatebenefratelli I.R.C.C.S. of Brescia, the only one among the 48 Italian IRCCS (Scientific Institute of Reasearch, Hospitalization and Health Care) that focuses on psychiatry. During the years 2008-2013 he was also the Scientific Director of the same I.R.C.C.S. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Psychiatry Institute of London (in the Unit managed by M. Shepherd), at the Institute of Psychiatric Demography in Aarhus (Denmark), and at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh (USA). From 1988 to 1994 he worked at the Mental Health Division of the W.H.O in Geneva, guided by Norman Sartorius. From 1998 to 2001 he was the Coordinator of the Mental Health National Project, organized by the National Institute of Health in Rome, that involved 47 specific research projects and more than 100 centers throughout Italy. He has promoted and directed numerous international and national research projects. He is the author of 345 publications, among which 40 volumes or monographs (as author or curator), 275 periodical articles and 73 book chapters in 3 languages.

Michele De Luca

Michele De Luca is Ordinary Professor of Biochemistry, Director of the “Stefano Ferrari” Regenerative Medicine center and Director of the Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine Interdepartmental center of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He is the Scientific Director of Holostem Terapie Avanzate Srl.

Riccardo Dalla Favera

Riccardo Dalla Favera is a Professor of Pathology and Genetics, and the Director of the Institute for Cancer Genetics at Columbia University, in New York. Among his lates publications, can be quoted Basso, K., Dalla-Favera, R. Germinal Centres and B cell lymphomagenesis. Nature Reviews Immunology 15(3):172-84, 2015.

Luca Enei

Luca Enei is Manager of the Informative Systems and Assistive Technologies Consultant at the ASPHI Onlus Fundation.

Pasquale Fedele

Pasquale Fedele is Founder of Liquidweb s.r.l. an innovative startup.

Alberto Forchielli

Alberto Forchielli is Founding Partner of Mandarin Capital Partners.

Claudio Franceschi

Claudio Franceschi was Professor of Immunology at the Universities of Padua, Modena and Bologna (1998-2003), and now he is Emeritus Professor at the University of Bologna. He discovered the main characteristics of the immunosenescence and he studies the molecular and cellular bases of ageing and human longevity with researches on centenarians.

Federico Fubini

Federico Fubini is Vice-director of the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Giovanni Gatti

Giovanni Gatti is Director of the “Qi Gong School” in Milano.

Nicola Gencarelli

Nicola Gencarelli works witch technologies for the disabilities at the ASPHI Onlus Fundation.

Luigi Gerli

Luigi Gerli is Curator of the Marino Marini Collection of mechanical instruments.

Maurizio Giani

Maurizio Giani teaches musical aesthetics at the Department of the Arts of the University of Bologna. He has been studying for years the relationship among literature, aesthetics and music, with particular reference to German culture of the 19th and the 20th centuries.

Alberto Giannetti

Alberto Giannetti is Director of the Dermatological Clinic of the University of Modena, and Scientific Director of IRCCS national dermatologists, President of the Italian and European Societies of Dermatology and Emeritus Professor of Dermatology at the University of Modena. Among his latest publications is Textbook of Dermatology and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (2013, Piccin Editore).

Peter Gluckman

Sir Peter Gluckman is Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, co-chair of the WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity and head of the Centre for Human Evolution, Adaptation and Disease at the University of Auckland. He has published over 700 scientific papers and reviews and several books for both technical and lay audiences. His research has encompassed fetal and childhood development, the origins of obesity, developmental origins of health and disease, epigenetics and the evolutionary-medical interface. He has received numerous scientific and civilian honours.

Stefano Golinelli

He graduated in elctronic engineering in 1970 with top results at the University of Bologna. Afterwards, he worked for several years at CISE, ENEL industrial research centre. He entered Alfa Wassermann SpA in 1975, company founded by his father in 1948, where he had different roles with growing responsibilities. During the 1990’s he was a member of the Management Board and CEO. Now he is the President of the company. He is the President of Alfasigma SpA, a pharmaceutical group born in 2015 from the union of Alfa Wassermann and Sigma-Tau. Eng. Stefano Golinelli is a member of the Executive Committee of Farmindustria, association of pharmaceutical companies.

Andrea Grignolio

Andrea Grignolio (Rome, 1974) teaches History of Medicine at La Sapienza University of Rome and he is research fellow of the research program Le Studium Biomedicaments at the Université François Rabelais of Tours(France). He was guest at the Centre Cavaillès of the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris, Postdoc Fellow at the Center for History and Philosophy of Science of the Boston University and Visiting Scholar at the Office for History of Science and Technology of the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of the book Chi ha paura dei vaccini? (Codice Edizioni 2016). He currently writes on the newspapers La Stampa and Repubblica.

Patrizia Hrelia

Ordinary Professor of Toxicology at the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, President of the Italian Society of Toxicology, where she is involved in fighting against counterfeiting of medicines and health products and in promoting food safety. She is the author of more than 180 works concerning preventive and translational medicine.

Silvana Hrelia

Silvana Hrelia is Professor of Biochemistry at Pharmacology School of Bologna.

Tim Hunt

Sir Tim Hunt was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2001 for the discoveries of protein molecules that control the division of cells. He works at the Cancer Research UK, London Research Institute, Clare Hall Laboratories, South Mimms, Herts EN6 3LD, U.K. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1991 and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1999. He was knighted in 2006.

Eric Kandel

Eric Kandel won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2000. His studies are about the fisiology of neuronal memory.

Luciano Lancioni

Giuliano Lancioni, is a Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at Roma Tre University, he deals with computational models of music and language.

Liuwe Tamminga

Liuwe Tamminga is considered one of the major specialists of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian repertoires for organ. He is the organist of the historic organs at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna together with Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, where he plays the magnificent instruments by Lorenzo da Prato (1471-75) and Baldassarre Malamini (1596). He has recorded several compact discs, among them the complete works of Marc’Antonio Cavazzoni (awarded the “Diapason d’Or,” Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2005, Goldberg 5 stars); the complete Fantasies of Frescobaldi (best recording of Amadeus, March 2006 and Diapason 5 stars); “Mozart in Italia” (Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik 2006 and Diapason 5 stars); and a recording dedicated to Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, together with L. F. Tagliavini (“Choc de la musique” and the International Prize “Antonio Vivaldi” of the Cini Foundation in Venice, 1991). He is the curator of the San Colombano Museum – Tagliavini Collection.

Luo Ping

Luo Ping is Director of the Education Department of the Chinese Embassy.

Nicoletta Luppi

Nicoletta Luppi is Vice President and Managing Director of MSD Italia.

Alberto Mantovani

Alberto Mantovani graduated in Medicine and Surgery and specialized in Oncology; he is the Scientific Director of the IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas and teaches at the Humanitas University. He received several national and international prices for his research activity. Since many years he is pointed out as one of the most quoted authors of the international scientific literature.

Claudio Marchetti

Professor Claudio Marchetti is a Specialist in Maxillofacial Surgery. He is a Maxillofacial Surgery Ordinary Professor at the University of Bologna. He is the Director of the Oral and Maxillofacial Operative Unit of the Sant’Orsola Polyclinic, Bologna.

Giuseppe Martorana

Giuseppe Martorana has been Professor of Urology at the University of Bologna since 1994. He is a national and international expert of Cancer Urology. He is promoter of advanced technologies like laparoscopy and robotic surgery in Urology. He is co-founder of SIURO (Società Italiana di Urologia Oncologica) established in 1990. He was President of the Società Italiana di Urologia. He was also President of the College of ordinary Urology Professors. He is founder and President of the Scientific Committee of SAMUR (Studi Avanzati Malattie Urologiche) Onlus Association.

Armando Massarenti

Armando Massarenti is in charge of the cultural supplement of the magazine “Il Sole 24 Ore”.

Umberto Mazzanti

Umberto Mazzanti is Vice President of the Association of Bolognaise Acupuncturist Doctors.

Mario Melazzini

Mario Melazzini is President of the Board of AIFA.

Clara Melloni

Clara Melloni studied Chinese Medicine at the Italian Acopuncture Society, Canton University and at the Quigong research institute of Beijing University. In 2006 she was elected president of the Italian Federation of Integrated Medicine.

Gaetano Miccichè

Gaetano Miccichè is President of Banca IMI.

Francesca Milano

Francesca Milano is an expert in dentistry of the sleep.

Emilio Minelli

Emilio Minelli is in charge of the special courses of Acupuncture and Unconventional Medicine and Complementary Techniques at Milan University.

Luigi Naldini

Luigi Naldini is Director of the Istituto San Raffaele Telethon per la Terapia Genica (SR-Tiget), Director of the Divisione di Medicina Rigenerativa e Cellule Staminali of the Istituto San Raffaele; he is a member of the Scientific Committee for Research at the Istituto San Raffaele and Professor at the University Vita Salute San Raffaele.

Alessandro Nanni Costa

Alessandro Nanni Costa is General Manager of the National Centre for Transplants.

Manlio Nicoletti

Manlio Nicoletti is Medical Director of the Oculistic Unit at the Ospedale Maggiore of Bologna.

Domenico Nocera

Domenico Nocera is Computer Technician for Infracom Italia S.p.a.

Giuseppe Novelli

Giuseppe Novelli è is Dean of Tor Vergata University in Rome.

Luca Pani

Luca Pani is General Manager of the Drug’s Italian Agency (AIFA).

Gabriele Pelissero is the President of the Gruppo Ospedaliero San Donato.

Susi Pelotti

Susi Pelotti is Professor of Forensic Medicine at Bologna’s Law School.

Andrea Pession

Andrea Pession is Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the School of Specialization in General and Specialist Pediatrics at the University of Bologna. He wrote six book and published over 489 articles reviewed by the Science Citation Index.

Antonio Pirodda

Antonio Pirodda is Professor at Bologna’s Medical School.

Giuseppe Plazzi

Giuseppe Plazzi is Professor of Neurology at Bologna’s University.

Eleonora Porcu

Eleonora Porcu is Associate Professor of Gynaecology and Obstetrics at the University of Bologna, and Responsible of the StrutturaSemplice di Infertilità e Procreazione Medicalmente Assistita at the general hospital S. Orsola-Malpighi of Bologna. She is author of 215 international publications and 179 national publications.

Romano Prodi

Romano Prodi is President of the Fondazione per la Collaborazione tra i Popoli.

Claudio Rapezzi

Professor Claudio Rapezzi is Director of the Unità Complessa of Cardiology at the general hospital S. Orsola of Bologna and of the School of Cardiovascular System Diseases at the University of Bologna. His research focus mostly on: clinic cardiology, cardiovascular physiopathology, diagnostics, electrocardiography, cardiac insufficiency and myocardium diseases. He is author of over 500 publications on national and international reviews, books and conventions acts.

Fabio Regazzi

Fabio Regazzi has a degree in piano, composition and electronic music. Since 1993 he has worked at the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna, where he is the Responsible of the Laboratory of Musical Computer Science. He is the Technical Director of the Laboratory “DoMuS” (Documentazione della Musica e dello Spettacolo) as an expert at audio-video transferring, digitalization and restoration from analog devices, in particular from tapes and vinyl discs.

Giuseppe Remuzzi

Giuseppe Remuzzi is “clara fama” Professor of Nephrology at the Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences of the University of Milan. From 1996 to 2013 he was Director of the Public-Private Department of Immunology and Transplant Clinic (a collaboration between Ospedali Riuniti and Istituto Mario Negri), and from 2011 to 2015 he was Director of the Department of Medicine at the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital (Bergamo). He is a member of the “Gruppo 2003”, the group of the most quoted authors of the international scientific literature (Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia). He is the author of over 1290 publications on International Reviews and of 13 books; he also writes for the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

Walter Ricciardi

Walter Ricciardi is Professor of hygiene at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery “A. Gemelli” of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.

Luigi Ricciardiello

Luigi Ricciardiello is a Gastroenterology Professor at the Medical and Surgical Science Department of the University of Bologna. From 1997 to 2000 he was a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of California in San Diego and from 2005 to 2009 he was a Senior Research Associate at the Baylor University Medical Center of Dallas. His scientific and clinical activity mainly concerns colon cancers. He is the President-elect of the National Societies Committee and of the United European Gastroenterology.

Massimo Scaccabarozzi

Massimo Scaccabarozzi is President and CEO of Janssen Italia and Presidente of Farmindustria.

Giangiacomo Schiavi

Giangiacomo Schiavi is an Italian writer and journalist.

Renato Seracchioli

Director of the Gynecology and Phisiophatology of Reproduction Operative Unit of the S.Orsola-Malpighi Polyclinic of Bologna. He is also Associate Professor of Gynecology at the University of Bologna. He is interested in sterility and assisted reproductive technology. He is the author of more than 200 publications concerning sterility, assisted reproductive technology and minimally invasive gynecological surgery.

Vittorio Alessandro Sironi

Vittorio A. Sironi is a doctor, historian and anthropologist, specialized in neurosurgery and history of medicine. He teaches History of medicine and health care at the faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the University Milano Bicocca, where he is the Director of the “Centro studi sulla storia del pensiero biomedico” (www.cespeb.it). He is the author of several essays about the history of Medicine, neurosciences and the popular cultures; he has founded and directs, together with Giorgio Cosmacini, the series History of medicine and health care for Laterzapublishers.

Piergiorgio Strata

Piergiorgio Strata is Emeritus Professor of Neurophysiology at the University of Turin. He was a researcher in Canberra and Chicago with the Nobel Prize John Eccles. He is Honorary Professor of Neurology at the Northwestern University of Chicago. He is a member of international Societies and Academies, like the Academia Europaea. National Academy of Sciences XL Medal in Physical and Natural Sciences and Premio Feltrinelli at the Accademia dei Lincei. His research focuses on the functions of the cerebellum, memory and brain damage therapy. He is the author of over 250 publications on international scientific reviews, like P. Strata “La strana coppia Il rapporto mente-cervello da Cartesio alle neuroscienze” (2014, Carocci publishing house); G. Giorello and P. Strata (ed.) “L’automa spirituale. Menti, cervelli, computer” (1991, Laterza publishing house).

Marina Tadolini

Marina Tadolini is a Doctor, Specialized in Infectious Diseases. She works internationally as an expert in Tuberculosis for the World Health Organization and the Global Fund. Since 2013 she has been a reference point for Tuberculosis at the Infectious Disease Clinic, University Hospital Authority S. Orsola Polyclinic.

Marina Timoteo

Marina Timoteo is Professor at the University of Bologna, Director of the Istituto Confucio – Università di Bologna, Vice-principal at the School of Law at the University of Bologna and Director of AlmaLaurea.

Antonio Tosco

After graduating Law School he starts his career in the pharmaceutical area in 1986. For 10 years he has worked as Director of the Terapeutic Area Fertility & Endocrinology at Merck Serono. Since April 2011 he’s Health Outcomes & Market Access Director. He’s Vice President of Farmindustria’s Biotechnologies Group.

Roberta Vannini

Roberta Vannini is Coordinator of Rehabilitation Area at Montecatone Rehabilitation Institute S.p.A.

Elena Vegni

Elena Vegni, Clinical Psychology Professor at the University of Milan, deals with doctor-patient communication as the principle theme of her research curriculum. She has published quantitative investigations through the use of Roter Interaction Analysis System, one of the most widely used instrument to study communication during a medical examination. She has also published quantitative investigations through the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, in order to evaluate how the relational processes may deposit on the life of both the patient and the doctor, representing a resource but also an obstacle. She has published (for Cortinapublishing house) together with Egidio Moja “La visita medica centrata sul paziente” (The medical examination centered on the patient) and translated “La comunicazione della malattia grave” by R. Buckman.

Carlo Verdone

Carlo Verdone is an Italian director, actor and screenwriter. He won many prizes such as 9 David di Donatello and the Nastro d’Argento in 1980 for best emerging actor.

Carlo Vergani

Prof. Carlo Vergani graduated in 1963 in Medicine and Surgery. He studied with a scholarship at NATO at the Medical Centre of S. Francisco (University of California). He was Professor of Internal Medicine – Geriatrics from 1986 to 2010, Director of the Department of Internal Medicine from 2001 to 2007, Director of the Specialization School in Geriatrics from 2002 to 2008, Coordinator of the PhD in ageing physiopathology from 1999 to 2005 and from 2005 to 2008 at the University of Milan. He managed the Complex Unit of Geriatrics at the Foundation IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico di Milano from 1993 to 2010. He was a member of the Health Council from 1997 to 2002. He published many articles on national and international medical reviews. He wrote La nuova longevità (Oscar Saggi Mondadori 1999), Note pratiche di diagnosi e terapia perl’anziano (Elsevier 2008). He is co-author of Ancora giovani per essere vecchi (Grandi Saggi Corriere della Sera 2014). In 2011, he was awarded with the gold medal from the city of Milan.

Pierluigi Viale

Pierluigi Viale is Professor of Infectus Diseases at Bologna’s University.

Claudio Vicini

Claudio Vicini is Professor of Maxillo- facial techniques at Parma’s University.

Claudio Vincelli

Claudio Vincelli is Commander of the Carabinieri Command for Healt’s Safeguard.

Wei Wei

Wei Wei is Professor at the University of Chinese Medicine of Beijing, and he is the Responsible of the PhD and post-PhD programs of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. He is Director of the Department of gastroenterology of the Wangjing hospital, he is the Responsible of the Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine Treatment for the functional gastrointestinal tract diseases; he is the Academic Leader of the National Special Medical Center and National Special Priority Fields of Study and a member of the Advisory Board of the China Association of Chinese Medicine.

Wan Wenming

Wang Weming is Professor of Acupuncture at Liaoning’s Traditional Medicine School.

Zhu Xiaoxin

Zhu Xiaoxin is the Vice-president of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and he is a member of the Academic Committee of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. He is one of the main collaborators of Tu Youyou, and he took part in the research team that developed the project leading to the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015. He keeps on developing the research field started with Prof. Tu Youyou, and now he deals with pharmacology and pharmacokinetics in the traditional Chinese Medicine (with particular attention to the vassal pharmacology) for the development and research of new drugs.

Rocco Maurizio Zagari

Rocco Maurizio Zagari is an Associate Professor of Gastroenterology at the Medical and Surgical Science Department of the University of Bologna. From 2005 to 2009 he was Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, Uk, Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, obtaining a Master of Science in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. His research activity concerns the Helicobacter pylori infection and the diseases of the esophagus, stomach and duodenum.

Giovanni Zuliani

Giovanni Zuliani is Professor at Ferrara’s Medicine School.

Festival della Scienza Medica 2016

Download the English version of the program 2016

May 19th

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08.45/10.00 – TEATRO ANATOMICO DELL’ARCHIGINNASIO

Visit with animation at the anatomical Theatre, for primary schools
Two mornings dedicated to children. Primary school students are invited to take part to an “anatomical lesson” in the suggestive Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio. A show where professional entertainers will tell the wonders of the human body in a funny and engaging way. Suitable for: second cycle of primary schools.

9.00 – PODESTÁ ALL

Drugs and quality of life: looking for a synergy between University and pharmaceutical companies
Staged by: Farmindustria, Società Italiana Farmacologia, Società Italiana Tossicologia
Speaker/discussant: Sabrina Angelini, Claudio Borghi, Nadia Canova, Giorgio Cantelli Forti, Eugenio Cusimano, Fabrizio de Ponti, Enrica Giorgetti, Patrizia Hrelia, Antonietta Pazardjiklian, Maurizio Recanatini, Lucio Rovati, Marco Scatigna

9.45/11.30 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

Between life and death: guided visit with stage drama thorough the famous “Portico della Vita” and “Portico della Morte”
An animated visit in the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Vita to go through the places devoted to the study of medicine and the care of sick people, reaching the historic Palazzo of the Archiginnasio. A journey through the centre of Bologna accompanied by a weird student that will tell stories and anecdotes of the past university life. Suitable for: lower and upper secondary schools

10.00 – RE ENZO ALL

Eradication of the smallpox and other vaccines
Andrea Grignolio
Responsible of millions of deaths, smallpox terrified thousands generations with its cyclic epidemic outbreaks. The first empirical practices to prevent smallpox (variolation) came from the Far East, but it was only after the invention of vaccination by Edward Jenner at the end of 1700 that humanity started to fight infectious diseases for the first time. This discovery inaugurated the age of vaccines, which led the WHO to declare the global eradication of smallpox in 1979. Today, social frictions, wellness as well as emerging diseases bring back vaccines at the center of public discussion. After the lecture: Introduction to the clinical trials, in collaboration with: Città della Scienza di Napoli

10.30 – STABAT MATER

Why the doctor has to tell all the truth even to the children
Giuseppe Remuzzi
How should we behave with children and adolescents affected by serious or very serious diseases? For doctors there is – or, maybe, there was – an unwritten rule made of three principles: 1. never talk to children about their disease; 2. never answer questions about diagnosis and about what may happen later; 3. never talk about death and dying (but still today children die of certain diseases, and so?). In one word, it is seems necessary to lie to children, it was like this for decades – at least in the United States – and children realized it. “Why do children with cancer avoid speaking?” Georg Wolff, a German psychologist, kept asking himself since 1978. Maybe because they know that asking questions to doctors is useless, so they remain silent. It is a frightening silence

11.00 – ATTI ALL

Paediatric Clinic
Simulated hospital rounds with: Giacomo Faldella Andrea Pession
The visits in wards come back: real hospital beds, with young students playing the patients’ role that will tell their clinical record. The public will follow the visits that will analyze similar cases in different time periods. A journey to understand the history and the evolution of diagnosis and medical treatments

11.30 – SOCIETÁ MEDICA CHIRURGICA ALL

From nutrition to endoscopy. The prevention of digestive system tumors in the ages of life
Franco Bazzoli
Luigi Ricciardiello
Rocco Maurizio Zagari
Sponsored by AIRC
Digestive system tumors, in particular those related to the esophagus, stomach and colon, represent the most important causes of incidence and death from cancer. These tumors share risk factors related to lifestyles and nutrition in particular, and also diagnostic and therapeutic instruments, like endoscopy. These tumors can be avoided through primary prevention, which has to start from a young age leading a healthy lifestyle and then on secondary prevention, which means the identification and removal of early lesions, reserved for older people

12.00 – STABAT MATER

Adult age and nutrition
Arrigo Francesco Giuseppe Cicero
Wei Wei
Adult age represents the crucial phase of life in which we decide how to age healthy. Correct nutrition plays a key role in maintaining a healthy life and it helps prevent the most common pathologies related to senility. What are the staples of this diet? Calorie intake proportional to the amount consumed, few salt, lots of vegetables and legumes, few products of animal origin, extravirgin olive oil, lots of spices and a glass of wine

15.30 – STABAT MATER

Choosing Leadership in Medicine
Sponsored by ANMDO (Associazione Nazionale Medici Direzioni Ospedaliere)
Coordinated by: Gianfranco Morrone, Giovanni Pieroni Introduction by: Giovanni De Plato Speakers: Mattia Altini, Carlo Favaretti, Chiara Gibertoni, Domenico Mantoan, Gabriele Pelissero, Roberta Siliquini

18.00 – PODESTÀ ALL

Inauguration with the authorities

19.00 – PODESTÀ ALL

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain From Vienna 1900 to the Present
Eric Kandel
Coordinated by: Fabio Alberto Roversi Monaco
The central challenge of XXI century science is to understand the human mind in biological terms. The possibility to achieve this goal began at the end of the 20th century when cognitive psychology, the science of the mind, merged with neuroscience, the science of the brain. Mind and Brain, the classical philosophical dichotomy, Descartes’ error as told by the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, returns in the reflection of one of the most important living scientist, the 2000 Nobel Prize, Eric Kandel. Original and sparkling is his choice of a particular form of art; modernist portraiture in Vienna at the beginning of the XX century. According to Kandel, both this aesthetics and that period of time, are characterized by a series of pioneering attempts to connect art and science. A great public reading on art and science meant to inaugurate the II° edition of the Festival of Medical Science of Bologna

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May 20th

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08.45/10.00 – TEATRO ANATOMICO DELL’ARCHIGINNASIO

Visit with animation at the anatomical Theatre, for primary schools
Two mornings dedicated to children. Primary school students are invited to take part to an “anatomical lesson” in the suggestive Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio. A show where professional entertainers will tell the wonders of the human body in funny and engaging ways. Suitable for second cycle of primary schools

9.30 – SOCIETÁ MEDICA CHIRURGICA ALL

Choosing wisely: avoiding bad practices
Sponsored by ANMDO (Associazione Nazionale Medici Direzioni Ospedaliere)
Coordinated by: Ottavio Nicastro, Sandra Vernero Speakers: Piero De Carolis, Eugenio Del Toma, Maria Teresa Montella, Ida Iolanda Mura, Fausto Nicolini, Marino Nonis

9.45/11.30 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

Between life and death: guided visit with stage drama thorough the famous “Portico della Vita” and “Portico della Morte”
An animated visit in the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Vita to go through the places devoted to the study of medicine and the care of sick people, reaching the historic Palazzo of the Archiginnasio. A journey through the center of Bologna accompanied by a weird student that will tell stories and anecdotes of the past university life

10.00 – RE ENZO ALL

From the weeping willow to the aspirin. The evolution of antiinfiammatory drugs
Vittorio Alessandro Sironi
NSAIDs (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) is an acronym introduced in the 1960s to designate a varied class of analgesics, antipyretics and anti-inflammatory drugs different from steroids. Their 9 empirical discovery is ancient, but the scientific knowledge and the creation of the first chemical products systematically used in medicine can be dated to the last decades of the 19th century, along with the development of pharmaceutical industry. The discovery of the acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), patented by Bayer in 1899, is symbolic. The talk will highlight the history of the medical use of this molecule over time and the evolution of NSAIDs, with their problems – even recent – on the advantages and the side effects connected to their use and abuse. Also the marketing strategies related to these drugs will be discussed, with reference to the events that, a few years ago, led to the withdrawal of some molecules belonging to a new family of NSAIDs (Selective COX-2) for their serious side effects. The issue of the relationship between risks and benefits in a specific medical and pharmacological field will also be discussed. After the lecture: Introduction to the clinical trials, in collaboration with: Città della Scienza di Napoli

10.00 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

Vaccini: un investimento per la salute della popolazione e la sostenibilità del SSN
Nicoletta Luppi
Vaccines are biological products that prevent infectious diseases and some types of cancer. If they are administered according to appropriate strategies, they ensure the control of targeted diseases, but also their elimination or even eradication. Vaccines have also an economical value: investing in prevention from the very beginnig, and throughout the entire life, means spending less money in the future, making the health care system more sustainable and effective in improving people’s health. For these reasons, vaccines can be considered the most cost/effective measure of public health care

10.30 ORATORIO DI S. FILIPPO NERI

Short term memory: why we still need vaccines
Alberto Mantovani
Walter Ricciardi
Sponsored by AIRC
Vaccines are universally recognized as one of the most important preventive tools of public health. The decreased trust towards vaccines, witnessed by the recent reduction of national coverage, recalls all the 10 characters involved – central Government, Regions, medical and public experts – to the identification and fulfillment of EBM vaccine policies able to promote the social, ethic, economic and above all healthcare value of vaccinations

10.30 – AULA ABSIDALE OF S. LUCIA

The Titanic metaphor: transplants, waiting lists and choosing criteria
Alessandro Nanni Costa
Antonio Pinna
In order to make it less “tragic”, the choice of which patient has to be the first in the transplant waiting list must to be motivated and transparent: in this way the selection can be at least impartial and comprehensible but still “difficult”. The extraordinary successes of the transplantation medicine represent the scientific achievement that most deeply impressed our collective imagination. But sometimes some doubts may rise. Two protagonists will tell their experience in order to erase the Titanic image and metaphor

11.00 – ATTI ALL

Urology Clinic
Simulated hospital rounds with: Giuseppe Martorana
The visits in wards come back: real hospital beds, with young students playing the patients’ role that will tell their clinical record. The public will follow the visits that will analyze similar cases in different time periods. A journey to understand the history and the evolution of diagnosis and medical treatments

11.00 – STABAT MATER

China is getting nearer and nearer
Sponsored by: Intesa Sanpaolo
Welcome By: Luo Ping, Alberto Forchielli, Stefano Golinelli, Gaetano Micciché, Luigi Naldini, Romano Prodi, Marina Timoteo
Closing remarks: Huang Yongyue
Introduction by: Federico Fubini
China has started, in a progressive way, to “consume” well-being and healthcare as our Western world and in particular has started to “ask for” treatments and models to face the internal healthcare problems: it represents a “market” with an enormous potential. The oppurtunities related to “research and development” are also huge, with the Chinese Government and companies, that have made considerable steps ahead in the implementation of the latest technologies. The role of the financial institutions is also relevant as they may accompany the cooperating processes

11.30 – AUDITORIUM ENZO BIAGI

Fragile ages: children and elderly nutrition
Silvana Hrelia
Giovanni Zuliani
Children and elderly people represent the extremes of the fragile ages, in which a proper lifestyle and nutrition help to grow harmoniously in one case and guarantee a healthy and successful ageing in the other. Regarding children, the main aims of the research in the nutritional field are to fight infant obesity, whereas in elderly people the aim is to maintain a healthy and autonomous life. Both children and elderly people should have a balanced and complete nutrition of the main nutrients and nutraceuticals, keeping in mind that what is eaten can influence health and physical efficiency in both fragile ages

12.00 – PODESTÁ ALL

The Personalized Medicine Revolution: are we going to cure all diseases and at what price?
Aaron Ciechanover
Coordinated by: Piergiorgio Strata
With the realization that patients with apparently similar diseases – breast or prostate cancer, for example – respond differently to similar treatments, we have begun to understand that the mechanistic bases of what we thought mistakenly is the same disease entity, are actually 12 different. As a result, we are exiting the era where the treatment of many diseases was used to be “one size fits all”, and enter a new era of “personalized medicine” where the treatment is tailored according to the patient’s molecular/mutational profile. Here, the understanding of the mechanism will drive the development of new drugs. This era will be characterized initially by the development of technologies to sequence individual genomes (transcriptomes, proteomes and metabolomes), followed by identification and characterization of new disease-specific molecular markers and drug targets, and by design of novel, mechanism-based drugs to these targets. This era will be also accompanied by complex bioethical problems, where genetic information of large populations will become available, and protection of privacy will become an important issue

12.30 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

The future of biotechnologies: innovation opportunities and sustainable growth
Antonio Tosco
Thanks to pharmaceutical research many existing therapies have improved and many new treatments have been discovered to cure diseases thought incurable. Biotechnologies represent the frontier of innovation and the principal source of potential answers to unsatisfied health needs and are also a sector with many growth opportunities, where Italy is proving to be internationally competitive

15.00 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

Doctor Darwin
Pietro Corsi
Medicine was never absent from Charles Darwin’s life. Raised among doctors, nephew of the famous Erasmus, Darwin himself studied, reluctantly, medicine. He addressed himself to texts concerning genetic inheritance when he decided to marry his cousin, Emma Wedgwood. He believed that the diseases suffered by his children where due to inbreeding; he himself tried everything to relieve his own sufferings

15.00 – ORATORIO DI S. FILIPPO NERI

…from one pill to another… How Italian people’s sex habits have changed in the last 60 years
Giuseppe Martorana
From the end of the war until today, Italian people’s sex habits have deeply changed: from sex intended only for procreation to sex as pleasure, from the indissolubility of marriage to divorce, from homosexuality negation to gay pride, from elderly sexual quiescence to the ever green, etc, Radical changes have also occurred in the clinical field: from the birth control pill to Viagra, from penil implants to transsexual surgery, from laparoscopy to robot, etc. It is difficult to say how these elements may have influenced one another. Speaking, this time, is not a sociologist or a sexologist but an urologist, witness of this clinical-social evolution

15.00 – RE ENZO HALL
Healing on the web
Sponsored by: CISCO

16.00 – STABAT MATER

The ages of fertility
Eleonora Porcu
Marielle, Madagascar: “I was consigned to my husband when I was little. When I was 13 I gave birth to my first child”. Every year in the world 2 millions of girls, aged less than 15, become mothers. Rajo Devi Lohan, 72 years old, after 18 months from the birth of her daughter, is in desperate conditions but declares: “I don’t care about being sick, I lived enough to become a mother”. Opportunities, geography and the stages of fertility

16.30 – ORATORIO DI S. FILIPPO NERI

De senectute
Giangiacomo Schiavi
Carlo Vergani
It is now necessary to redefine the stages of life. The limit that defines old age is dynamic: in Italy, in the middle of the last century, life expectation at 65 years was 13 more years whereas today 13 years are the expectation of a 75 year-old person. The age between 65 and 74 14 years is today considered the one of the young olds, a population that shares with young people a great part of biological characteristics. So, now there seems to be a mismatch between chronological and biological age. The great part of the elderly’s handicap has nothing to do with their own physiology, but it is the result of a society which privileges the supremacy of youthfulness. Only by recognising and defending their different normalcy, the elderly people find out that their life makes sense

16.30 – AUDITORIUM ENZO BIAGI

Face, surgery and 3D technologies. Maxillo-facial achievements and frontiers
Alberto Bianchi
Claudio Marchetti
One of the medical areas in which new technologies have been mostly used in the last decades is the maxillofacial surgery: personalised CADCAM prosthetics, virtual simulations, 3D techniques and intraoperative navigation are now used daily to cure neoplasms, injuries and facial anomalies. Have Doctors got closer to patients in this way? Are they able to understand them more and to accompany them throughout the experience of the desease? A question is making its way through. What is the real role of modern technologies in medicine: are they merely useful or really decisive?

17.00 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

The relationship among health, healthcare and politics in Republican Italy: from the first centre-left wing party until today
Roberto Balzani
Few people have considered it from a historical point of view, but the relationship between politics and health is, in Italy from 1960 onwards, decisive. The end of old charity congregations, together with the modernization of the local healthcare and the affirmation of the universal system, change interlocutors, places of power and sources of 15 supply. An open battle between the center and the outskirts of the city which is still going on

17.30 – ATTI ALL

Patient’s history in today’s medicine
Staged by: Elena Vegni, in collaboration with Ivan Fossati, Antonella Gullotta, Giulia Lamiani
In collaboration with: Ordine dei Medici di Bologna
Doctor-patient communication is more and more central in magazines. Sometimes it is discussed in a general way suggesting to humanize medicine, other times in a more urgent way: can effective communication modify patients’ compliance? Can we change the way doctors communicate? With these and more questions we will enter a medical office to follow a patient’s history. We will also reflect together, doctors and patients, about how crucial, tiring and intense it is to build a good relationship with ill people, in which the principle aim should be a good communication

17.30 – STABAT MATER

Age of onset of mental disorders: new knowledge and effective interventions
Mariano Bassi
Giovanni De Girolamo
In the last 20 years international survey have shown that up to the 75% of mental disorders start between 15 and 25 years of age: but the services for mental health mostly treat people out of this age range. It is necessary to redefine services and to switch from late and less effective interventions to early and more effective ones. It is also necessary to increase medical knowledge regarding mental health problems among young people

18.00 – RE ENZO ALL

Oocyte development
Renato Seracchioli
Oocytes constitute women genetic patrimony: they are contained in the female gonade, the ovary, and they reach the maximum number of 7 millions at the 5th month of fetal life. Subsequently the production stop 16 to give way to a progressive reduction, so that at birth we register about 2 millions oocytes and during puberty about 300.000. Less than 1% of those oocytes, that are only about 500, will develop in the period between puberty and menopause and will be suitable to be fertilized. The process of conservation, maturation and selection of oocytes is really complex. We will try to understand it more through the experience (half-serious) of an oocyte that illustrates all the stages of its life

18.00 – AULA ABSIDALE OF S. LUCIA

The sound of silence. Genius and suffering in Ludwig van Beethoven
Maurizio Giani
Antonio Pirodda
Fabio Regazzi
The fact that the musical genius of Beethoven expressed himself despite his deafness is an anecdote known by many. What did his pathology consist of? What was he suffering from? Which diseases and how many stages did he go through before composing the IX Simphony and his famous string quartets, in the silence of his mind? Through testimonies and documents, and with the help of technology and science, Bologna Medicine offers an exclusive event: the compositions of the Maestro heard as he probably heard them, while his disease was getting worse. A moving document and a conference/happening to understand the complex relationship between disease and creativity

18.00 – ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI OF BOLOGNA

The rules of the body. Norm and arbitrariness
Sponsored by: Accademia di Belle Arti of Bologna
Organized by: Piero Deggiovanni, Valeria Roncuzzi, Camilla Roversi Monaco
The exhibition will feature a specimen on the representation of the body between art and science. More than 30 graphic artworks will be presented together with a sampling of rare, antique, illustrated editions and a significant exhibit of statues belonging to the precious plaster cast gallery of the Institution. 17 A section will introduce the public to recent artistic-video reproductions that will deal with the multiple connotations of the body as a place of conflicts, comparisons and ontological, existential and identity questioning

19.00 – CHIESA DI SAN COLOMBANO

Mozart: machine, time, death
Luigi Gerli
Giuliano Lancioni
A conference-concert on the relationship among machine, time and death, in Mozart’s music and among enlightment culture, automatons and exoticism, with the mechanical musical instruments of the Marini Collection and the antique instruments of the Tagliavini Collection: Mozartian music for mechanical organ as a metaphor of the vision of time and of the stages of life at the end of the 18th century

19.00 – PODESTÁ ALL

Discovering the genes of immunity: genetics in the service of health
Bruce Beutler
Introduction by: Lucio Ildebrando Maria Cocco
Our immune system is composed of two lines of defence. The first one is constituted by innate immunity, and when microorganisms overcome this line, adaptive immunity intervenes through T and B lymphocytes, that produce antibodies and killer cells able to destroy microorganisms and infected cells. Once the pathogen is destroyed, the adaptive immune system maintains an immunological memory. The discoveries that have revolutionized the concept of immune defenses have been achieved studying the defense mechanisms of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), with particular reference to the Toll gene family, involved into the embryonic development. These results have demonstrated that fruit flies and mammals use similar molecules in order to activate innate immunity

20.00 – PALAZZO FAVA – PALAZZO DELLE ESPOSIZIONI

FR 17.3 Nel Segno
By: Gianluca Cingolani
Curated by: Dugong Produzioni
Art installation on the memory of sign language

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May 21st

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9.00 – AULA OLIVO

Presentation of a National Research Web for the identification of myelodysplastic syndrome markers
Carlo Maria Croce

9.45/11.30 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

Between life and death: guided visit with stage drama thorough the famous “Portico della Vita” and “Portico della Morte”
An animated visit to the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Vita to go through the places devoted to the study of medicine and the care of sick people, reaching the historic Palazzo of the Archiginnasio. A journey through the centre of Bologna accompanied by a weird student that will tell stories and anecdotes of the past university life. Suitable for: lower and upper secondary schools

10.00 – STABAT MATER

From quinine to artemisinin: a history of antimalarial treatments (China)
Marco Corsi
Zhu Xiaoxin
For centuries, malarial fevers were attributed to miasmas coming from the swamps. Indeed, the word “malaria” comes from “mala aria”, literally “bad air”. Only in 1898, parasitologists discovered that the infection was conveyed by mosquitos bite. Already 250 years ago a drug effective against malaria had been discovered, the quinine. The new frontier of antimalarial therapies is interestingly connected to the Vietnam War, and the related discoveries that led to the 2015 Nobel Prize, awarded to the Chinese Professor Tu Youyou will be discussed

10.00 – RE ENZO ALL

The future emerging diseases come from the past: from tuberculosis to super-bacteria
Marina Tadolini
Pierluigi Viale
Every period in the past had its own “infections”,, and there are various infective pathologies that continuously accompany humans:: they seem to disappear but then come back, or they seem like something unexpected but they have always been there. For example, tuberculosis, that has returned to be a worldwide health problem and the multi-resistant superbacteria that are freightening health organizations both in the north and south of the world, and coexist with medical scientific advances

10.30 – ORATORIO DI SAN FILIPPO NERI

Sleep, health and well-being
Francesca Milano
Giuseppe Plazzi
Claudio Vicini
Sleep breathing disorders are highly frequent and represent the cause of several effects on health and quality of life. If they are not treated, they are related to an increase in the cardiovascular risk. In children, they can be responsible of a growth delay, hyperactivity and poor school performance. In adults, they can worsen the capacity to concentrate, driving vigilance, induce somnolence during the day and cause metabolic alterations. In elderly people, they can compromise cognitive capacities. Snoring and sleep apnea studies started in Bologna in the 1970’s and are considered a milestone in the neurological research of the last century. The therapies and prevention available today involve different medical specialties that are able to face and solve in an integrated way the multiple consequences of this pathology

10.30 – AUDITORIUM ENZO BIAGI

I and the new technologies: an independent life for people with spinal cord injury
In collaboration with Montecatone Rehabilitation Institute
Introduction by: Augusto Cavina, Marco Gasparri
Coordinated by: Filippo Preziosi
Speakers: Nicola Gencarelli, Luca Enei, Domenico Nocera, Roberta Vannini, Pasquale Fedele
With the witness of: William Boselli
Sponsored by: Montecatone Rehabilitation Institute
The Montecatone Rehabilitation Institute is home every year to approximately 500 people with medulla lesion from all over Italy. During the recovery, the rehabilitation project aims at achieving the maximum recovery of reachable autonomy against a permanent disability. And then? Then, it is necessary to rethink a life that can be a real Life. Today, new technologies offer growing opportunities to live an independent life also when the disability is strongly impactful

11.00 – ATTI ALL

Cardiology Clinic
Simulated hospital rounds with: Claudio Rapezzi
The visits in wards come back: real hospital beds, with young students playing the patients’ role that will tell their clinical record. The public will follow the visits that will analyze similar cases in different time periods. A journey to understand the history and the evolution of diagnosis and medical treatments

11.00 – AULA ABSIDALE OF S. LUCIA

Qi – The live blow. Discovering Traditional Chinese Medicine
Staged by: Marcella Brizzi, Marina Timoteo
Speakers: Fu Baotian, Renato Crepaldi, Umberto Mazzanti, Clara Melloni, Emilio Minelli, Wang Wenming
Traditional Chinese medicine doesn’t have to be considered as an alternative medicine but as an integrative one compared to western medicine: it is a different approach to the study and cure of the same pathologies. In this view, two different souls of Traditional Chinese Medicine can be identified: one that acts on therapies relating to western medicine, and one that acts on lifestyle. A reflection on the possible integrations

11.30 – ORATORIO DI S. FILIPPO NERI

When the brain degenerates. Which cognitive resources
Fiorenzo Conti
Cesare Cornoldi
Cerebral aging represents a field of great scientific and social interest. In the great area concerning cerebral aging, cognitive decline is 22 certainly the most interesting as well as worrying aspect. Are we all subjected to cognitive decline? When? And does it involve all the aspects of our cognitive abilities? What is being done? And, above all, what can we do right now (or what should have we done already)?

11.30 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

From medical genetics to genetic medicine. Pathological inheritance in the history of medical thought
Gilberto Corbellini
The application of genetics to the problems of the diseases’ causes has given way to medical genetics, which managed – and still manages – to identify the genes’ variants leading to a pathological phenotype. This is an approach that characterizes also the use of genomic tools in medicine. Actually, genetics is not a body of knowledge that can be separated from evolutionary and developmental biology. The pediatrician Barton Childs suggested a theory of medicine, that he called “genetic medicine”, based on the knowledge of physiological and evolutionary genetics, and thus able to explain, better than any other approach, the several and complex dynamics from which human health and disease come from..

12.00 – AUDITORIUM ENZO BIAGI

Counterfeiting health
Giorgio Cantelli Forti
Stefano Cinotti
Patrizia Hrelia
Claudio Vincelli
Counterfeiting is a crime, a planetary problem, a great threat towards public health that also involves food and medicines. An illegal turnover of 1,1 billion a year for the food industry. Ten per cent of medicines sold in the world is counterfeit, including cases of poisoning and intoxication. This phenomenon is increasing and evolving: shopping channels are multiplying and techniques to bypass controls are expanding. However, in our Country there are people who monitor the phenomenon to safeguard health

15.00 – RE ENZO ALL

Doping ages
Francesco Botrè
In a world where result, performance and record seem to count more than effort, motivation or enthusiasm, the temptation of doping can go beyond the sport field: a sort of “pact with the devil” that accompanies human beings throughout the stages of their life experience. What risks do we take when we surrender to temptations such as shortcuts, cheating and deception against others and ourselves?

15.00 – PORTICO DELLA MORTE

Working on Qi and the art of cultivating life: experiences with qigong practices, taijiquan and baguazhang under the “Portico della Morte”
Renato Crepaldi
Giovanni Gatti
Clara Melloni
Under one of the first and most emblematic places of western medicine in Bologna, the Death Arcade of the Archiginnasio, we will experiment one of the most fascinating activities of Traditional Chinese Medicine

15.30 – SOCIETÁ MEDICA CHIRURGICA ALL

What can we learn from the study of rare diseases?
Andrea Bartuli
A rare disease (RD) is every morbid condition, congenital or acquired, with an incidence lower than 1 case every 2000 inhabitants. For most RDs there are no therapies that can “heal” the patient, but only treatments that can make the pathology chronic. Because of the rarity of the single diseases, there are no declared valid protocols based on evidences. Nevertheless, RDs are wonderful opportunities: the organization of survey for homogeneous groups, the immediate transfer of research into clinical practice, the development of research in collaboration with associations for patients and families’ empowerment, the students and young doctors’ education not only represent a first answer to the families and patients’ needs, but also a 24 wonderful opportunity of growth for both the Italian and European health care

16.00 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

The implications of Genomics between Medicine and Healthcare
Giuseppe Novelli
DNA is life, the rest are details! This is the slogan of an American society of genomics that highlights the importance of DNA in our life. The genome project (HGP), concluded in 2001, got us used to the idea that once it was decoded, the benefits for humanity would have been enormous. Some expectations were exaggerated, but the current developments of molecular genetics are creating the basis to reconsider medicine in its grounds, starting from the knowledge of the genome, looking especially at “how” genes works rather than “why” they exist. This will involve the aggregation of interdisciplinary operative structures in which geneticists have to communicate with chemists, physiologists, clinicians, cellular biologists and computer technicians

16.00 – TEATRO ANATOMICO DELL’ARCHIGINNASIO

Visit with animation at the anatomical Theatre, for families
Two events dedicated to families. Children and their parents are invited to take part to an “anatomical lesson” in the suggestive Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio. A show where professional entertainers will tell the wonders of the human body in a funny and engaging way

16.30 – AULA ABSIDALE OF S. LUCIA

Why centenarians are centenarians?
Claudio Franceschi
Centenarians and their family members represent the best model of longevity and healthy ageing, and allow us to identify protective factors towards age-related diseases. The results that we have obtained with an integrated approach (Systemic Medicine) demonstrate the importance of the interaction among environment/life style and genetic, epigenetic and metagenomics factors (intestinal microbiome)

16.30 – RE ENZO ALL

The price of drugs
Luca Pani
There are two main criteria to determine the cost of pharmaceuticals. On the one hand there is the historically obsolete one which assume that the cost of a pharmaceutical represents the purchase of the raw material of which a drug is composed; so it is needed as a “payment” for the active principle milligrams necessary for the therapy. On the other hand, there is the view that take into account theparameters based on the entity/dimension/importance of the clinical benefit generated by the treatment. In the anglo-saxon countries we talk about “value-based pricing”, where the terms benefit, clinical result, clinical value, therapeutic value, etc. serve more or less indifferently to indicate the main parameters that orients the cost

17.00 – ORATORIO DI S. FILIPPO NERI

Crime has no age. Medical science and the investigative process
Susi Pelotti
Claudio Rapezzi
What is the age of crime? Are there crimes that are specific to particular age of life? In which way do medical science and investigation influence the debate of the trial? To answer these questions we will discuss how the scientific evolution has influenced trials as in famous and less famous court cases that have seen among testimonies the inspection, the collection of biological traces, DNA, how the Judge, peritus peritorum, interpreted the evidence and how means of communications were able to involve the whole society into an intense debate

17.00 – STABAT MATER

Regenerative Medicine
Michele De Luca
Regenerative medicine based on the use of stem cells for tissues’ reconstruction is an important challenge for degenerative diseases’ treatment. Our Country does not lack examples of excellence, even though here research carried out with some of these promising cells finds, more than elsewhere, ideological obstacles and barriers of a “pseudo-ethical” kind, which are scientifically and ethically unjustified

17.30 – ATTI ALL

Clinical eye: the medical science of the individual
Luigi Bolondi
The capacity to solve a medical problem does not always correspond to the doctor’s knowledge and in Medicine, more than in other disciplines, “knowing what to do” is very different from simply “knowing”. The focus of the medical action is not the disease, but human beings that are always unique. We could say that that if the cure is the dress to create for the patient, scientific knowledge represent the fabric, and the doctor, who is a tailor, has to cut and sew the texitile material according to the shape of each patient. Today the scene is even more complex and the clinical eye of a single doctor has to be substituted by the action of a team of specialists

17.30 – AULA DELLE CONFERENZE SOCIETÁ MEDICA CHIRURGICA DI BOLOGNA

Innovation and sustainability
Massimo Scaccabarozzi
New pharmaceuticals enable tailored and more efficient therapies. The debate on their cost has to start from the necessity to make them accessible, considering their value as an investment, since they avoid other health and social expenses. A health care system for the future has to evaluate the result of the service, for the patient and for the efficiency of the entire Welfare system, letting go some of the logics of the past

18.00 – AULA ABSIDALE OF S. LUCIA

Causes and consequences of microRNA dysregulation in cancer
Carlo Maria Croce
Since the discovery of miR-15a and miR-16-1 deletions in CLL, many laboratories around the world have shown miRNA dysregulation in all tumors studied, including the most common, such as lung, breast, prostate and gastrointestinal cancers. Such dysregulation, like the dysregulation of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, can be caused by multiple mechanisms, such as deletion, amplification, mutation, transcriptional dysregulation and epigenetic changes. 27 As miRNAs have multiple targets, their function in tumorigenesis could be due to their regulation of a few specific targets, possibly even one, or many targets. A future challenge will be to identify all of the targets of the miRNAs involved in cancer and establish their contribution to malignant transformation. An additional challenge will be the identification of all of the miRNAs that are dysregulated by pathways that are consistently dysregulated in various types of human cancers. This point is of particular importance, as instead of focusing on specific alterations in protein-coding oncogenes or tumor suppressor genes — which may be difficult to treat — we could focus on their downstream miRNA targets. If these miRNA targets are crucial for the expression of the malignant phenotype and the cancer cells depend on their dysregulation for proliferation and survival, we can expect that the use of miRNAs or anti-miRNAs will result in tumor regression. Genomic analyses for alteration in miRNA genes or for copy number alterations in various human tumors by deep sequencing is in progress but has not been completed. These studies could provide additional information concerning the involvements of miRNAs in cancer and in many other diseases. Over the past few years, we have observed a shift from conventional chemotherapy to targeted therapies, and miRNAs and anti-miRNAs will contribute extensively to the latter

18.00 – S. MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH

The ages of skin
Alberto Giannetti
Skin ageing includes cosmetic alterations, dermatitis connected to age and skin cancers. The intrinsic ageing, typical of skin not exposed to sun, is characterized by thin wrinkles, homogeneous pigmentation and dryness. Sun exposure speeds up the ageing process with wrinkles and deep pigmentation alterations. Chronical sun exposure is partly responsible for skin cancers, typical of the elderly

18.30 – RE ENZO ALL

Focus staged by the students of the Faculty of Medicine of Bologna
A group of students deal with some of the Festival’s themes, offering a point of view of that generation that will take up the baton of Medicine and will guide the developments in the XXI century. Using TED-talk: the attention to lifestyle, the relationship between medicine and society and future perspectives of Medical Science

19.00 – PODESTÁ ALL

Switches and latches: control and growth of normal and pathological cells
Tim Hunt
Introduction by: Lucio Ildebrando Maria Cocco 
The cell cycle defines the correct proliferation of cells, that is how these remain “good” and not cancerous. Many genes involved into the cell cycle progression were identified at the beginning of the 1970’s thanks to studies conducted on yeast (yes, the one we use when cooking!). The correct cycle progression, that enables the duplication of cells and the life of men, is controlled by enzymes that are called ciclyn-dependent kinases (CDKs). In multicellular eukaryotes the necessity to respond to a major number of internal and external stimuli has enabled the evolution of multiple and diverse CDKs that are fundamental to maintain the correct cell patrimony of each organism. The active part of the CDKs is the target of enzymes that remove or add phosphorus and determine the phosphorylation status of the complex, modulating its activity more finely. Thus, these enzymes are similar to switches that turn on and off the cell cycle progression, whereas stable interactions are similar to bolts or latches that once they are closed they need a key and not just a simple push

19.00 – ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTI OF BOLOGNA

ANATO-MIA
Staged by: Accademia di Belle Arti of Bologna

The Artist Sissi and her students of the Academy will offer an approach to the poetic vision of the body through a performative action that, starting from a reflection and an analysis of the 29 epithelial tissue, will lead us to its recreation-regeneration through the tailoring tissue

21.00 – TEATRO DUSE

Fenomenologia del Dottor Raniero: show by Carlo Verdone
A dialogue-interview with Carlo Verdone, a reflection on how cinema has historically interpreted medicine, the role of the doctor and the one of the patient; an overview with some “characters” typical of the roman director’s movies, focusing on the extraordinary character of Dr. Raniero, the obsessive and disturbing doctor of some of his movies. An encounter also with Carlo Verdone and his “incurable” curiosity for medicine and pharmaceuticals

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May 22nd

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10.00 – RE ENZO ALL

Penicillins and other antibiotics
Mauro Capocci
After the lecture: Introduction to the clinical trials In 1928, Alexander Fleming had a fluke and discovered penicillin, but it took other 15 years in order to start the antibiotics’ revolution. Only after the Second World War, the “miracle drug” was available all over the world. Since then, several new antibiotics have been developed, often through a collaboration between private and public sectors. But all that glitters is not gold: the use of antibiotics has selected resistant bacteria, making it more difficult – especially in the poorest countries – to control infections. This is the challenge for the future, which will require a collaboratior between health care policy and basic research

10.00 – ORATORIO DI S. FILIPPO NERI

Back pain. Why do we suffer from it and will never eradicate
Arnaldo Benini
Lumbar back pain (lumbago) is the most common pain. Incidence and gravity are growing up, also among the youths. The 80% of adult suffer at least sporadically, but often continuously, of lumbago. Its causes are the atavistic structure of the lumbar segment of the backbone and the modern life’s adverse conditions to backbone itself. We will not break free from this disease soon

10.30 – STABAT MATER

The diseases of information
Alison Abbott
This festival has done a lot to bring the medical sciences to the public in Bologna. But how can we make sure that new medical advances are brought to the public in a responsible way? A journey from the bench side discoveries, through scientific publications like Nature, to the worlds of old and new media

10.30 – TEATRO ANATOMICO DELL’ARCHIGINNASIO

Visit with animation at the anatomical Theatre, for families

11.00 – PODESTÁ ALL

The fetus: can it predict its own future?
Peter Gluckman
The fetus does not develop passively under instruction by its genes. Rather it must make developmental adjustments in response to the environment it predicts it will grow up in to maximize its chance of survival. This is the evolved process of developmental plasticity, much of it underpinned by epigenetic change. But predictions can go wrong and when they do the risks of death and illness, particularly noncommunicable disease rise. This new understanding has major implications for public health. It leads to new thinking about the definition of malnutrition and the prevention of challenges such as obesity

11.30 – ORATORIO DI S. FILIPPO NERI

Precision Cancer Medicine: Lessons from B Cell Lymphoma
Riccardo Dalla Favera
Recent advances in the analysis of the genome of cancer cells have allowed a dramatic increase in our understanding of the genes and cellular functions that are altered in the hundreds of distinct cancer types. These data are the basis for the development of novel therapies tailored to individual tumor types. These new developments will be illustrated using the example of B-Cell Lymphomas

12.30 – PODESTÁ ALL

The future of Italian biomedical research
Elena Cattaneo
With an in intervention by Mario Melazzini, President of AIFA, by video conference Towards which challenges is biomedical research going, in light of the scientific and technological progresses? How does Italy fit in the 32 international panorama? What results is it producing? What are the potentials and the limits of the biomedical research system in Italy? Are there national virtuous examples from which we can learn how to improve the system performance? What should the scientific community and politics do?

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PALAZZO FAVA. EXHIBITION CENTRE (via Manzoni, 2)

Inaugurated in 2011, today Palazzo Fava is Genus Bononiae’s Exhibition Centre.
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Covering an area of more than 2600 square metres, Palazzo Fava regularly houses national and international exhibitions like The Girl with a Pearl Earring and From Cimabue to Morandi-Felsina Pittrice. Frescoed on the noble floor by the young Annibale, Agostino and Ludovico Carracci, Palazzo Fava was defined by Roberto Longhi an historical novel, imagined on the great previous painting that was able to overcome mannerism in order to openly and direcly communicate not as a book but asawindow. The frescoes are the first important cycles of the Carraccis’ career, they were commissioned by Filippo Fava in 1584. Among all the frescoed panels, the episode about the Enchantments of Medea stands out. The sorceress is sitting naked about to bathe herself in a creek under the moon rays; this fresco was defined as the first modern nude in art history, by the art historian Andrea Emiliani.
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SAN COLOMBANO. TAGLIAVINI COLLECTION (via Parigi, 5)

The Complex of San Colombano is composed of a series of buildings joined together over time, starting from the 7th century.
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During the recent restoration works, an ancient crypt dating back to the medieval era was discovered together with an important 13th century wall painting, attributed to Giunta Pisano, representing Crist on the cross between the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist. Inaugurated on 21st June 2010, the Complex houses the antique musical instrument Collection donated by the Bolognese Maestro Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, composed of approximately 90 items including clavichords, spinets, harpsichords, pianos and other instruments, and the specialized library of the Bolognese Scholar Oscar Mischiati. The calendar of events includes guided tours of the Complex, afternoon concerts in the Oratory and monthly evening concerts on the instruments of the Tagliavini Collection.
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SANTA MARIA DELLA VITA CHURCH (via Clavature, 10)

The Monumental Complex of Santa Maria della Vita, whose management has been entrusted to the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna since 2006, was reopened to the public in 2010 after a complete restoration.
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The Church, whose dome was designed by the architect Bibiena, is the most important example of Bolognese baroque. Inside the Church, the famous Compianto sul Cristo Morto by Niccolò dell’Arca is preserved, that “scream of stone”, as it was defined by Gabriele D’Annunzio, that has deeply influenced the history of Italian culture. Next to the Church is the Oratory, where it is possible to admire the terracotta sculpture group Transito della Vergine by Alfonso Lombardi, and the Old Hospital now turned into the Museum of Health and Assistance.
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CASA SARACENI (via Farini, 15)

Considered to be one of the most interesting buildings in the city from the Renaissance period towards the late 15th century, today the historical residence of the noble Saraceni family is home to the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna.
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AULA ABSIDALE OF SANTA LUCIA(via de’ Chiari, 25)

The Aula Absidale of the Santa Lucia complex was designed for different uses in the past, and it is part of the Bolognese University; it is the location dedicated to conventions and concerts.
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Its main nave has over 100 seats, while in the apsis there is a wide amphitheatre room. The Architect Roberto Scavannini oversaw the huge restoration of the complex, which was finished in 1998 and brought back the building to its ancient radiance.
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ORATORY OF ST. FILIPPO NERI (via Manzoni, 5)

The Oratory of San Filippo Neri is a fascinating cultural container property of the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e Ravenna, that bought and restored the building in 1997 with the objective to return it to the city as a centre of cultural activities.
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The restoration work lasted 18 months: it faithfully returned what was a masterpiece of Baroque architecture by continuing the works started by Barbacci and using a wooden scaffolding to reconstruct the dome and the vaults. Inside the Oratory we can admire the architecture by Alfonso Torreggiani, the sculptures by Angelo Gabriello Piò (1690-1770), the altar piece by Francesco Monti (1685-1768), interventions by Fernando Galli Bibiena (1657-1743), decorations and plasters by Carlo Nessi and the Ecce Homo by Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619). In the Oratory there is also an organ constructed by the organ-builder Marco Fratti, under the direction of Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini and Oscar Mischiati. The organ is located in the same place where there once was the original instrument that was completely destructed during the bombings of 1944.
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ARCHIGINNASIO PALACE Anatomical Theatre Stabat Mater lecture hall Società Medica Chirurgica of Bologna lecture hall (piazza Galvani, 1)

The monumental 16th century building of Archiginnasio is one of the most meaningful palaces of Bologna.
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It was built in only one year and half between 1562 and 1563, and in the pope’s intentions the “new schools’ building” or Archiginnasio had to join and dignify the several University schools of the city, to give importance to the Bolognese studies in the face of the competition with the new European University centres. The palace is irregularly built on the previous structures, and moves around a central courtyard with a double loculus order and is enriched with vaults, stairways, arcades and architectural elements of a great value. The two rooms that will host the events of the Festival of Medical Science are the two original lecture halls that were attributed to the Artists and to the Jurists.
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PALAZZO RE ENZO
Podestà hall
Re Enzo hall
Atti hall
Quadrante hall
(piazza Nettuno, 1)
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Palazzo Re Enzo was built in the 14th century immediately after the Palazzo del Podestà, and it was called originally New Palace to distinguish it from the latter; its function was new indeed, since it had to include the widespread representatives of the people. It became later the forced house of King Enzo of Sardinia, son of the Emperor Frederick II, who, captured during a war, was imprisoned there for 23 years, until his death. The Palazzo was rebuilt and restored several times, and it is one of the most important venues of the city. The crenelated profile of the building faces Nettuno Square and bears witness to the splendour of Bologna during the Middle Ages.
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THE ARCADE OF DEATH (via Musei, 8)

The Arcade of Death takes its name from the nearby Hospital, now home of the Archeological Civic Museum.
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The members of the “Death Company” took care of those who were sick and incurable and also those condemned to death. Since 1931 Nanni Bookshop has been located under the Arcade of Death, where also a young Pier Paolo Pasolini would often go. Here, since 1825, there has been an antique bookshop and in the XVIII century “della Colomba” printshop was also active.
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ENZO BIAGI AUDITORIUM – SALA BORSA (piazza del Nettuno, 3)

Right in the heart of Bologna, inside the wonderful setting of Sala Borsa, the Enzo Biagi Auditorium is located.
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Offering about 200 seats, the Auditorium is a venue for cultural events, conferences, meetings, congresses, festivals and seminars. The building also houses one of the most important libraries of Bologna as well as archeological digs that preserve the traces of the city’s antique civilizations.
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DUSE THEATRE (via Cartoleria, 42)

Teatro Duse is the traditional theatre of Bologna and one of the oldest in the city. It is also one of the most important prose theatres in Italy.
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The new artistic direction of the last years has given to this historic stage a strong innovation and a rich cultural programme.
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THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS IN BOLOGNA (via Belle Arti, 54)

The Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna is located in the heart of the University district.
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Together with the Pinacoteca Nazionale, it occupies the Complex of Sant’Ignazio Church and Jesuit Novitiate, founded by Alfonso Torreggiani between 1728-1735. The Academy was then refounded during the Napoleonic era, from Palazzo Poggi it was transferred into this convent building that was readapted (Sant’Ignazio Church was transformed into the Lecture Hall of the Academy and in 1805 the dome was also reduced). After that, the Collamarini wing was added, whereas the modern spaces of the Artistic High School (Irnerio wing) were only recently added. New extentions have been realized over the last years, during the requalification project involving the Academy of Fine Arts: in 1997 with the basement restoration, new expositional spaces for the Academy and Pinacoteca were added, called “Sale delle Belle Arti”, next to them the Museum of the Academy was opened; together with the Arcangeli classroom, used for lessons and conferences, the Guidi classroom and the annexed gallery were also built, used as didactic and expositional spaces. In 2001 the former theatre was transformed into the polyvalent hall called “Padiglione De Vita”.
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PALAZZO POGGI MUSEUM (via Zamboni, 33)

The current structure of Palazzo Poggi building dates back to remodeling and expansion work done in the 16th century on a home purchased by the Poggi family at the end of the 15th century.
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Some scholars attribute the design of the remodeling to Pellegrino Tibaldi, others to Bartolomeo Triachini and others yet to Gaetano Alessi. The plans called for a two storey building, with an imposing façade on via San Donato (today via Zamboni), an atrium and a lodge with a portico, and a staircase leading to the noble floor. Most of the laboratories of the Science Institute were housed right there on the first floor, where the museum is located today, starting from 1711. The tower of La Specola astronomical observatory was completed in 1726, on a design by G.A. Torri and C.F. Dotti, while the Aula Magna of the Institute’s Library (today the University Library) was completed in 1744 with blueprints by C.F. Dotti. During the Napoleonic era, from 1803 to 1805 the headquarters of the University was transferred from the Archiginnasio to Palazzo Poggi.
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ISTITUTI ANATOMICI
Wax Museum “Luigi Cattaneo”(via Irnerio, 48)

The normal and pathological human anatomy collection of the Museum shows the path followed by 18th and 19th centuries medical sciences scholars who, after having acquired all the knowledge about the real nature of the human body, would start to study its diseases.
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The wax sculptures, natural and dried bones are an important material with valuable didactic purposes that completes the 18th century normal anatomy collection of the Palazzo Poggi Museums, representing thus a continuum in the medical research stranding out in Bologna between the 18th and the 19th centuries.
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The articles listed here are a selection of the ones dedicated to the second edition of the Festival della Scienza Medica. For the complete index of the Press Review 2016, click here

Click on the images to enlarge them

Piacenza e Provincia, March 21st, 2016

Unibo Magazine, April 12th, 2016

Corriere di Bologna, April 13th, 2016

Il Resto del Carlino Bologna, April 13th, 2016

 

 

Il Venerdì de La Repubblica, May 13th, 2016

Il Sole 24 Ore (Domenica), May 15th, 2016

Corriere della Sera, May 15th, 2016

Il Corriere della Sera, May 16th, 2016

QN – Il Resto del Carlino, La Nazione, Il Giorno, May 16th, 2016

Il Corriere di Bologna, May 17th, 2016

La Repubblica, May 17th, 2016

La Repubblica Bologna, May 17th, 2016

Tst, Tutto Scienze e Tecnologia, May 18th, 2016

F, May 18th, 2016

Ansa.it, May 19th, 2016

Il Corriere di Bologna, May 20th, 2016

Il Resto del Carlino, May 20th, 2016

Il Resto del Carlino, May 21st, 2016

Il Corriere di Bologna, May 21st, 2016

La Repubblica Bologna, May 21st, 2016

adnkronos, May 21st, 2016

Il Resto del Carlino Bologna, May 22nd, 2016

Il Corriere di Bologna, May 22nd, 2016

Il Resto del Carlino Bologna, May 23rd, 2016

La Repubblica Bologna, May 23rd, 2016

Il Corriere della Sera, May 25th, 2016

The Festival della Scienza Medica thanks the Authors, Photographers and Editors of the articles listed here, and is available to present further information about them, as well as – if formally and promptly required – to remove the article.

RADIO

RADIO EMILIA ROMAGNA May 16th, 2016
Presentazione Festival

 

RADIO INTERNAZTIONAL May 18th, 2016
Intervista Dott. Pino Donghi

 

RAI RADIO 1 LIFE May 18th, 2016
Intervista Prof. Roversi Monaco

 

RADIO CITTA DEL CAPO GR, 8.00 a.m., May 18th, 2016
Intervista Prof. Gilberto Corbellini

 

RADIO 3 SCIENZA May 18th, 2016
La sordità di Beethoven

 

RADIO 24 MOEBIUS May 21st, 2016
Contraffare la salute – Intervista Prof. Cantelli Forti

 

RADIO 3 SCIENZA May 30th, 2016
Intervista Prof. Eric Kandel

TV

RAI TRE -­TGR Emilia Romagna May 30th, 2016, 7 p.m.
Presentazione Festival

 

RAI UNO – UNO MATTINA May 19th, 2016
Storia di Lavinia

 

TRC TG EMILIA ROMAGNA May 20th, 2016
La Cina è sempre più vicina

 

ANSA TV – CANALE SALUTE E BENESSERE May 20th, 2016

Intervista Prof. Ciechanover
Intervista Prof. Beutler
Intervista Prof. Kandel

 

REPUBBLICA TV May 20th, 2016

Il futuro è la medicina personalizzata. Parola di Premi Nobel
Allarme vaccini. Ricciardi, chi ne parla male si metta una mano sulla coscienza

 

MEDIASET – ITALIA – SMART TOUCH! June 4th, 2016
Intervista a Carlo Verdone al Teatro Duse di Bologna